Five plus years of war has taken a heavy toll on our Syrian brothers and sisters. Since the beginning of the crisis, more than 4.3 million people have fled the country and 13.5 million are in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria. Earlier this week President Obama joined world leaders at the United Nations to insist the international community must work together to find durable solutions for the world’s 60 million refugees and migrants—the largest number in history. The first step in helping the millions of displaced Syrians, though, is to end the war ravishing the country.
Tell U.S. leaders it is time for the violence and war in Syria to stop and to begin the hard work of moving forward, toward a future where all Syrians can live together in peace and security.
A fragile cease-fire was negotiated last week between the U.S., Russia, the Syrian government and opposition combatants in order to deliver food and emergency aid to desperate populations in places like Aleppo. Rather than being merely a temporary halt in the fighting, the ceasefire should open up political space to press for a wider cessation of all bombing campaigns and military actions that perpetuate this terrible war.
On September 21 nearly thirty groups issued “A Call for an End to the War in Syria” on the Global Day of Action and Prayer for Syria. In the message the interfaith group of leaders appealed “We must use a just peace approach: scaling-up trauma healing, restorative justice, unarmed civilian protection, and transformative dialogue with all stakeholders involved in the conflict to build a sustainable just peace.”
You can respond to the call by contacting U.S. leaders and urging them to work to end the war in Syria. As a global community, we must respond with compassion and immediacy to the pressing needs of millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Yet there can be no durable solutions for the millions of displaced Syrians until the fighting ends. U.S. resources should support an alternative vision of peace with justice and practical peace-making strategies that can stand as alternatives to the war and violence that is being perpetuated in Syria.